The aura was there, but not the reality. Every page just made things worse. The uninitiated might be taken in by all this glitz—not me. Each snippet of information closed with another solicitation. There was a satisfaction guarantee, but it included a stipulation. Only monies for unused services would be refunded. I found the “refund policy” page and yelled at the computer, “Bloodsucker! All you want is for people to sign up.”
Payment could only be made by money order or Green Dot MoneyPak. I muttered, “Come on, Chance, that’s a classic scammer’s trick to guarantee this guy’s anonymity. Don’t you see?” I glanced around the room. “Now you’ve got me talking to myself.”
I took a deep, calming breath before continuing through the site. There were a dozen references from satisfied graduates on the Testimonials page. Had any of those graduates gone on to work for legitimate agencies? Gone out on their own? I began searching for the names. There was nothing for the first five names, then I hit pay dirt. It was a solid connection. Harvey Milliken, a “2012 Graduate,” had posted about his experiences with the agency on his own website. The thing is, Harvey had never become a private investigator.
Harvey’s post was, to be kind, a rant. He blamed the agency for scamming him out of nearly three thousand dollars. When he’d tried to get a refund, the agency had cited “up-front costs” and had returned $289.32 of his money. As I looked for other posts by Harvey, I discovered another, written about three months later, in which his identity had been stolen. According to Harvey, his bank account had been compromised first. A few months later, someone opened new credit accounts in his name. I shook my head. “You poor sucker. You didn’t realize you gave them everything they needed when you signed up, did you?”
“You guys need to be stopped,” I said. But, that task was not mine to take on. It belonged to Chance. I muttered, “If your old man finds out what’s going on, it really will be your last chance.”
Out on the lānai, during my dinner of leftover chicken, rice, and a small salad, the sun dropped below the horizon. The blue of the sky darkened, the sun’s yellow deepened to crimson, and white clouds turned silver, then dark gray. As the light dimmed, I moved inside, where I did a quick cleanup. While drying the dishes, I had a sudden flash of inspiration about the color coding for Victor’s files.
Chance had suggested the green ones were paid or rejected claim forms for different benefit programs. If so, green represented old stuff. The yellow folders were divided into categories of Current, 30 Days, and 60 +. That meant yellow had to be for active filings.
We also knew the red files were for clients. So, we had resolved claims in green, active in yellow, and the client information in red. What were the blue files? Were they some sort of cross-reference? I searched through the other documents and, at the end of an hour, hadn’t found a single duplicate. I had, however, confirmed Victor’s system. Each red file represented a client. The code on the red file appeared on forms in the yellow folders. I still didn’t know what blue was all about. And, all this coding—why?
Those weird date codes made more sense to a machine than a person. So, if Victor went to so much trouble, did he have a computer file somewhere? If so, where had it gone?
All of the forms in the yellow folders had been signed by Dr. Melville Morph. Who was he? Why was he the only doctor to sign forms for Victor? Other doctor’s names showed up in the older documents, but not in any of the yellow stuff. I’m not a big believer in coincidence. Did all those signatures mean Dr. Morph being paid directly by Victor? He could be in on the scam. Might not even be real.
Over the course of the next two hours, I created an index of all the files, colors, codes, and names, eventually determining that three names tied everything together: Graham Reynolds, Paddy Merlin, and Ray Topper. All of the codes began with an R, M, T, or X. Reynolds. Merlin. Topper. Was the X for Victor? Seriously? He fancied himself as Mr. X?
Graham Reynolds was tied to four of the red files, Paddy Merlin to two, and Ray Topper to the other thirteen. Maybe this was how Victor determined who got paid. That meant Ray Topper was the best salesman.
Unfortunately, all we had was a mundane filing system. Not nearly enough to break open the case. We might be able to gain more information by talking to those who had done the damage, however.
With Victor dead and Graham missing, the choice was between Merlin and Topper. Who would be the easiest to flip? Topper might harbor the most guilt over swindling his fellow veterans. He’d scammed more of them than the others. But, Paddy Merlin won the prize when I read the diagnosis on one of his medical claims. Lung cancer. His prognosis was listed as terminal. Poor Paddy. Cold as it might seem, maybe Chance and I could turn that to our advantage.
When my cell phone rang, I glanced at the display. My heart sank. It was Benni. I was exhausted from pouring over files. She’d have me tongue-tied in no time. I’d blow everything for sure. As much as it hurt, I let the phone ring.
Shortly after nine, I turned off the ringer on my cell and went to bed, a million thoughts trampling on my sanity. Benni. Meyer. Chance. Murder. Kimu...Staring at the ceiling, wrung out from the day’s events, I refused to surrender consciousness just to avoid a wild nightmare.
With my luck, Alexander’s long-dead Great Grandpa Kimu would visit me in my dreams tonight. At times, I was convinced he considered me the human equivalent of an Afterlife Home Depot—a place he could go when he felt like playing human-handyman. “Fix McKenna’s life” had become his passion. Too insecure to admit I’d made a mistake by getting involved in Meyer’s case, too determined to admit defeat so early, Kimu had to be itching for a chance to screw with my head.
Scratchy eyes. Heavy lids. Thoughts—a thousand of them—spun away in countless directions. I mumbled, “Please, leave me alone. I need rest.”
Images flashed in rapid succession. A castle. Towers. A knight. Each was gone before it fully formed. Darkness. Then, gray…
A medieval castle with twin towers appears through a dense fog. A knight in full plate armor materializes. He falls backward, disappears into the ground. A headstone rises in his place. The headstone marker, worn by the wind and rain through the ages, bears the name “Paddy Merlin.”
All around me grave markers appear. A rusty scabbard, broken in half as though tired of its own existence—lies across the next grave. Banners and triangular flags, all gray in the dreary light, dot the landscape.
A loud boom shakes the air. The sky lights up in a rainbow of colors. The fog parts and fireworks fill the sky a short distance overhead.
“Oh good grief.” The scene is straight out of the beginnings of an old Disney movie.
The sky explodes in a brilliant flash so bright I’m blinded. When my vision returns, I’m in a large room surrounded by knights in full armor. Across the room, ladies mingle with each other, their long, black gowns billow out despite the still air. Two women wear colors other than black. One’s gown is bright green, her opposite wears scarlet red.
An armored knight stands beside me.
“Who are they?” I point at the two women.
The resolute statue next to me stares blankly at the gathering. Even the women in the brightly colored dresses seem not to garner his attention, a fact I find impossible to believe in a fantasy world where everything means something—but what?
I tap the knight’s metal-clad shoulder, gesture at the women again. “Pretty hard not to notice them. The one in red’s super hot.”
A man wearing a modern-day tux strides to the center of the room. He wears a crown and stands erect with an almost regal bearing. When I turn to ask the knight another question, there’s a dent in his armor where I tapped his shoulder. Rust is spreading across the metal. The corrosion creeps outward, an ever-widening map that darkens the entire shoulder plate. I step back to avoid touching him again, but bump into another metal-clad figure.
A groan rumbles in my ears. Those around me don’t react. It’s like they—am I the only one to hear it? And what’s
happening to the knight I bumped? His arm is hanging limp, the armor crushed into itself. Before my eyes, rust crawls across the once-shiny metal like ants swarming a pie left out in the sun. The odor assaulting me turns my stomach. It’s like metal. Iron. No, blood.
“Kimu?” I hiss. “What the hell are you doing?”
No response. How unlike my ghost advisor. In the center of the room, the tux-clad man speaks. Unable to move without bumping into another knight and causing more damage, I stand rigid to watch and listen.
“As your king, I welcome all.” The man’s voice fills the room.
The ladies in black gowns curtsy at his words. Some titter. Some fan themselves. The knights murmur around me. It’s the first sign of emotion from any of them. To a man, their sounds are those of disdain. A loud groan fills the room. To my right, a massive pair of wooden doors creak open. The ladies turn their attention from the king to the open doors. The knights go silent as statues.
At first, nothing happens, then Kimu, wearing his standard-issue green board shorts and slippas, appears in the opening. A second later he disappears and materializes in front of me, a surfboard under each arm.
He motions for me to come closer. With a shake of my head, I indicate I’m afraid to move. He counters my reluctance with an expansive gesture. A path through the knights appears. When I stand next to Kimu, he says, “I don’t like makin’ house calls, but dat one nice entrance, yah?”
“What the hell’s going on here?”
He’s unfazed by my intense stare. This is beyond even Kimu’s penchant for the obtuse.
I point at the boards he carries.“Why do you need surfboards in a castle? What’s wrong with these knights? Get me out of here. End this, now!”
As usual, Kimu ignores me. Instead, he smiles and hands me one of the boards. “You gonna need dis.” He reaches into the back pocket of his board shorts and pulls out a ringing cell phone. “And dis.”
CHAPTER TEN
The ringing of the dream cell phone jarred me awake. Why was a phone still ringing? It wasn’t a cell. It was my landline. By the time I stumbled to the living room, the call had gone to the answering machine. Slurred words. Drunk. At this hour? The longer I listened, the angrier I became.
“Hey, man...I’m looking for...an...apartment. You still got...one...for rent?”
I stomped away from the machine, swearing at his idiocy. He left a first name and a telephone number. While pouring a glass of water, I counted the ways to tell some moron who called at 2:17 a.m. what a rotten impression he’d made. I snickered. Who knows? Maybe tomorrow—correction—this morning, I’d call him bright and early to let him know the place was already rented.
I returned to bed, tossed and turned for about half an hour, and wondered what Kimu was up to this time. Why a castle? Knights? Ladies in waiting? Why had he shown me the headstone with Paddy Merlin’s name engraved. I blinked back sleep as I replayed the image. There had been words etched beneath his name. What had they said?
Why was Paddy Merlin so important? Was he? Maybe I was just grasping at—an honest man. The words had been “an honest man.” Maybe my imagination was running wild, but that wasn’t likely. I knew better. Kimu liked helping the downtrodden. Everyone who knew him said the same thing. He was Champion of the Underdog. Screw that. Why couldn’t he be less obtuse? Seriously? Knights in armor? Women in red and green gowns? I chuckled at the image of him handing me the cell phone. Since when did ghosts need technology? How did he know my phone was ringing, anyway? At some point, I dropped off and slept peacefully.
I awoke just after six. Outside, a light rain pattered against the broadleaved plants and scented the moist air with a welcome freshness. In typical island fashion, the rain shower moved through in minutes, coming and going before the coffee finished brewing. By the time I took my first sip, the rising sun’s heat was vaporizing water droplets, making the air heavy. As long as the trades blew today, this promised to be a glorious day in paradise. It was one of the things I loved most about the islands—Mother Nature at work.
Lack of sleep weighed heavily on me. Between the crazy dream and that middle-of-the-night caller. The guy had to be a complete imbecile. I’d been ready to rip into him last night. This morning, however, I almost felt sorry for him. I no longer wanted to ruin his day. My anger had dissipated just like our morning shower.
With the first jolt of caffeine, the itch to dig into Victor’s files returned. Everything was right where I’d left it. So little to go on. We really needed the details—how the scam worked, who did what, who besides Meyer would want to kill Victor…
I picked up Meyer’s file and scanned through, looking for a clue I might have missed before. The top half of the first sheet was nothing more than his identification: social security number, date of birth, bank account information, etc. There was also a checklist of forms. Victor had checked off the boxes next to items for Appointment of Individual as Claimant’s Representative and Certification of Out-of-pocket Expenses. Behind the top sheet, I found the forms relating to those two items.
The other files followed the same pattern—an information form, an assignment of Victor as representative, and various benefit applications. Eighteen files in all. The quick flash of a memory appeared and was gone. The knights. How many there had been in the dream? A lot. Not a good answer, McKenna. I’d been surrounded by them. At least ten—fifteen—good grief, could it be? Had my subconscious conjured up eighteen knights based on what I’d seen in these files? Or had Kimu done it because he knew things I didn’t?
Rapping on the front door jarred me out of my downward spiral into last night’s visions. I glanced at the clock. Geez. It was after eight. I let out a heavy sigh and opened the door.
“Hey, McKenna!” Chance’s movie-star smile practically blinded me as he bustled in, headed straight for the dining room table, and scanned the last form I’d been reading. He glanced up, then gestured at the sliding glass door. “I was watching you for a couple of seconds. I tapped on the slider, but you didn’t hear me. You were super-intense and I didn’t want to scare you.”
Yeah, yeah, watch out for the old guy. He might have a coronary because of a little surprise. “I think I’m onto something. All of these people are victims. I’m guessing they’re all veterans. That seems to be Victor’s speciality.”
Chance snickered. “So con artists specialize? Like doctors?”
Ugh. My mouth tasted like stale coffee. I hadn’t even brushed my teeth, yet. To hell with it, I wasn’t about to kiss him. I gestured at the paper in his hand.
“Funny you should mention specialization. You’re right on two counts. I think Victor had a doc in his pocket, too. Most people in the medical profession wouldn’t touch this with a ten-foot pole, but Victor must have found one who was desperate. A good con man sticks to things he does well. VA benefit fraud and bogus investments appear to be Victor’s areas of expertise.”
Chance’s jaw fell slightly; he shook his head. “Amazing. You’re, like, a fountain of information. So, now we have a list of suspects for the murder. All we have to do is work though it and we’ll find our killer.”
“You’re on the right track, Chance, but you’ve jumped the gun. We have other suspects who have what could be an even better motive. Jealousy.”
“Jealousy?” Chance set down the paper and turned to gaze out the slider. His lips moved, but no sound came out. Slowly, a smile spread across his face and he began to nod. “Of course, the women. You know, when I was a kid, my dad was always so impatient and always shoved the answer in my face. You’re not like that, you let me work through the problem myself. Thanks for letting me do that.”
“No worries, Chance. I knew you’d get there. What’s your conclusion?”
“You suspect the killer is one of the two women Monty told you about.”
I held up a hand, palm facing forward. Chance returned the high five. I kind of liked this mentoring thing. “What do we know? Monty said there was a redhead named Cody. There wa
s also a blonde who started coming around recently.”
Knowing Kimu’s fondness for imagery, he was probably telling me Cody was the woman wearing the red dress last night. Monty the Squealer denied knowing full names, but Lexie might.
“Chance, you’ve got your first undercover assignment. You’re going to call Lexie, ask her out to lunch, then find out if she knows this Cody’s last name.”
Between the bugged-out eyes, the flush in his cheeks, and the slack jaw, I pegged his emotion as straight-up panic. Oh, yeah, he liked that girl…a lot.
“I don’t know that I could—I mean, wouldn’t that be—wouldn’t that be lying to her? Lexie’s a sweet girl and I wouldn’t want to...you know, take advantage of her.”
“Look, Chance, we’ve got two options. Spend the next two years wandering around Honolulu asking every blonde we see if she knew Victor or take a pretty girl to lunch. It’s not like you’re going to propose or anything. You said you weren’t even interested in a girlfriend, yah? No?”
He licked his lips as if he were making one of Life’s Grand Decisions. “Uh, McKenna. I don’t exactly get that expression—yah, no. Which is it? Yes? Or, no?” He motioned with his head toward the bay where I’d seen him surf many times. “The guys out there use it, but don’t like haoles very much and I didn’t want to seem stupid by asking what it meant.”
“As for those surfers, just keep working on them. Eventually, some of them will come around. Now, about that expression, it means, do you agree with me or not? Right now, it’s a polite way of suggesting you get your butt on the phone and act the part of a PI. Call that girl. Now!”
He gulped, but dialed. As he listened to the phone ring, he grumbled, “Sounded more like a command than a request.”
I extended my thumb and pinky and wiggled my hand in a shaka sign. Chance wasn’t watching me, though. His face lit up and he was as slick as coconut oil on skin. He and Lexie went through the introductions, the hi-how-are-you pleasantries, and the longer the conversation went on, the more I was sure he was in lust, if not love. Maybe he didn’t know it yet, but it might as well have been scratched on the high-school bathroom wall—Chance likes Lexie.
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